Pratt & Whitney Picks Middletown For Key Engine Work

Pratt & Whitney has decided to assemble some, and maybe the majority, of its engines for the Airbus A320 neo model — the largest booking of business by far for its new geared turbofan design — at its Middletown plant, an unexpected decision that was critical for preserving Pratt factory jobs in Connecticut.

The news came on the same day that Pratt announced it was terminating 200 salaried employees in Connecticut out of about 11,000 workers, as a broad cost-cutting move.

While the layoffs reflect current workloads, the engine assembly decision will support hundreds of jobs well into the future, starting in about two years.

Factory workers have been waiting anxiously to find out if Middletown mechanics would be given the chance to assemble the PurePower engine, the model at the heart of Pratt's commercial engines future.

"I've been after them for the last two contracts to give us some kind of inkling where they were going to build this thing," said Dave Durbin Sr., president of the Middletown local of the Machinists union, who was informed of the decision Thursday morning.

The engine is scheduled to go into service in 2015, and Durbin said the line would be ready about a year and a half before that. The company is spending tens of millions on tooling and on other changes, he said, though he declined to share the number company officials told him, because they are not publicly disclosing it.

"This is just unbelievably awesome for us," he said.

Pratt has hired 500 engineers over the past 12 months to work on PurePower designs. Spokesman Bryan Kidder did not say Thursday whether engineers were part of the layoff.

"Taking actions to manage our cost structure today, while continuing to invest in new programs, positions Pratt & Whitney for the long term and ensures a strong future for the company, our employees, customers and shareowners," Kidder said in a written statement.

Gov.Dannel P. Malloyreleased a statement reacting to the job cuts, saying he hoped the fact that Pratt is keeping single-aisle Airbus assembly operations here "will in the long run make up for the jobs lost today. The multimillion-dollar investment they're making in their facility in Middletown will set the foundation for growth that will mean well paying jobs for our residents. All of that said, it's still discouraging to hear about job losses — and it's why our top priority every day is job creation."

He was referring to the fact that the PurePower will replace Pratt's V2500 on Airbus single-aisle planes. Half of V2500 engines are assembled in Middletown, and half are assembled in Germany by Rolls-Royce, with 420 delivered last year. That work will be phasing out in Middletown by 2017, Durbin said.

The V2500 is the largest part of commercial assembly work at the Middletown plant, and commercial engines are about half of the plant's production.

"If the V2500 had gone down, and we didn't have anything, we would've been in big trouble," Durbin said.

He said while some assembly may be done in another place in the United States, "It looks like we're going to get the lion's share."

But Pratt has not said how much of the work would be done at any location. "Pratt & Whitney will perform the final assembly and testing of the PurePower PW1100G-JM engine for the Airbus 320neo family of aircraft at multiple locations, including the company's Middletown facility, where the company will invest in a new line for this work," Kidder said.

The decision to use Middletown union Machinists to build the next generation of Airbus engines was a surprise because the company has been reducing its production workforce there for decades.

A year and a half ago, Pratt President David Hess said that moving work from Connecticut allowed Pratt's profits to grow by nearly 8 percent a year on average over the last 13 years.

From 2009 to 2011, the company cut 975 manufacturing jobs in the state.

Union members had been upset over earlier comments from the chief financial officer ofUnited Technologies Corp., Pratt's parent company.

"Anyplace outside of Connecticut is low-cost," Gregory Hayes, told Wall Street investment analysts. "Even if work has to stay in the U.S., there are opportunities to reduce cost by moving out of those high-cost locations."

Given that history, the announcement was particularly sweet for Machinists.

"We're pretty ecstatic," Durbin said.

After the company closed the Cheshire overhaul facility, the workers were concerned about how much hourly work the company was willing to keep in Connecticut. "For us, this is a real shot in the arm," Durbin said.

Airbus is predicting that 4,000 A320s will be built in the next 15 years, which would require 8,000 engines, plus spares. Of the 1,066 planes ordered so far, Pratt has won 46 percent of the engine orders, for a total of 976 engines. Its goal is to win at least 50 percent of the orders on this plane.